Chapter 1

Lucille Bryson sat in the library of the manse and blandly regarded the "committee" which had come to call upon her. She knew what they wanted, and she knew exactly how she was going to handle them. She had seated them with the room-light behind her own chair and directly in their faces, a factor which left them squinting uneasily in her direction.

"Speak up, ladies," she said briskly. "My husband always has something for me to do after the midweek services just concluded."

"Well-" One of the callers cleared her throat, glanced at her colleagues for verbal support which wasn't forthcoming, then plunged ahead. "-It's about Jo Tucker. We wish-" The speaker hesitated.

"Yes." Lucille prompted.

The speaker remained silent, but one of her cohorts stepped into the breech. "We wish you'd reconsider asking for Jo's resignation from the altar committee," the second woman said.

"Why?" Lucille asked bluntly.

"Because it would be the Christian thing to do," the first woman said.

Lucille's stare at the speaker was icy. "I believe I need no instruction from you in my Christian duties, Mrs. Rogers," she said frostily. "Josephine Tucker is not being asked to leave our church; I would consider that un-Christian. I do feel that in the circumstances she would no longer be a fit individual to continue on the committee. We would be lax ourselves if we condoned it."

"But her husband will know!" the first woman protested.

"And Tom Tucker is a brute!" the previously silent member of the visiting delegation chimed in. "There's no telling what he might do to Jo."

"You'll have to pardon me if I consider that irrelevant," Lucille said coolly. "After all, we are discussing a woman who is conducting an immoral love affair with a man other than her husband, are we not. A man several years her junior?"

There was a sideways exchange of glances among the committee members, but no one spoke for a moment. "This is a small town," Mrs. Rogers said finally. "Word will get back to her husband of the committee's action. At the very least he'll divorce Jo."

"It seems to me that's his affair," Lucille said with practiced mildness. "Our duty lies merely in conducting our own churchly affairs with a dignity denied us by Mrs. Tucker's activities. Of course, you're welcome to discuss the matter with my husband, Dr. Paul." No one spoke. "Then if you will excuse me, ladies -" Lucille rose to her feet.

The woman rose, also, obviously dissatisfied but impotent. Lucille ushered them to the front door of the attractively appointed manse. "I'm sure you'll agree with me when you have time to think it over," Lucille added as she prepared to close the door behind them. "I'm sure your husbands will, too." She smiled to herself at the veiled warning. She didn't think any of her callers would care to have herself called to her own husband's attention as a vigorous defender of Josephine Tucker's escapades.

She turned away from the manse's front door, the women and their errand already dismissed from her mind. She knew she was acting correctly, for the good of the church, so what availed further debate on a matter she considered already closed? Paul might have taken a softer attitude, but she knew the women of the committee would never approach him on such a matter. Paul's chilly exterior effectively prevented communication on intimate subjects.

Lucille moved lightly toward the rear of the ranch-styled manse. She had been truthful in her statement to the women that her husband always had something for her to do after midweek services, although she knew they wouldn't dream of the actual circumstance to which she was referring. It was the part of the week she liked least, and she was always happier when it was over.

Lucille Bryson was twenty-seven, a woman of medium height and 130 firmly fleshed pounds. Raven-black hair framed features handsome rather than beautiful. Like her husband, Paul, her father had been a minister, and Lucille could never remember a time when her choices in life hadn't been automatically laid out for her. A graduate of Radcliffe, she found herself overeducated for their current congregation, a prosperous but mainly blue-collar group whose practical attitude toward life often frustrated Paul's spiritual efforts. Lucille was active in several community activities. She knew that she was regarded by many as a "do-gooder," but she consoled herself with the knowledge that the work needed to be done. As a minister's wife, she tended to regard other women as chipped vessels needing guidance. Her own four-square outlook on life was simple: sinners must suffer and repent.

She entered the master bedroom and began to undress.

Dr. Paul Bryson sat at his desk in his study, making notes in his journal as he always did after a service. Jotted observations, essentially: Mrs. Holcomb had seemed distracted during the service, while Harold Tennant had walked with a pronounced limp. Items such as these when commented upon after Sunday service helped to cement the image of a young minister in physical as well as spiritual rapport with his congregation.

Paul Bryson closed his journal with a sigh. He had been a brilliant divinity school student, but he lacked the common touch. He knew that he was regarded as a cold fish. He wondered occasionally if some of his male juices had evaporated because he had been raised from infancy by two maiden aunts. He had married only because it was a requirement in his profession before receiving his first post. It had been time to get married, and Lucille, with the proper credentials, had been available.

His wife exasperated him at times with her continued - but admittedly effective - meddling in church affairs. Lucille intimidated him with her continual righteousness; he was all too conscious of his own doubts before decisionmaking moments. He supposed that Lucille's effective upper hand in their marriage had begun with their honeymoon during which her by-the-numbers approach to sex had almost emasculated him. She had read a marriage manual prepared for minister's wives.

Paul Bryson knew that he was an attractive man. Occasionally he surprised what he could only interpret as a speculative gleam in the eyes of an attractive female parishioner although he never had the slightest inclination to follow through in such a situation. Lately he had become more fully aware that his role in life was more as a spectator than as a participant, but he was at a loss how to achieve a breakthrough.

His eyes strayed to the clock on the corner of his desk, and he rose to his two-inches-great-er-than-six-feet erectness, his tennis-conditioned 185 pounds lithely balanced.

He closed the door of his study and walked toward the master bedroom at the rear of the manse.

Josephine Tucker sat on the sofa in the living room of her apartment and considered her caller soberly. "I know you did the best you could, Elaine," she said;

"She wouldn't even listen to us," Elaine Rogers replied. "And she as much as threatened to ask our husbands why we were so interested in asking-in asking-"

"Mercy for a sinner," Jo Tucker completed bitterly. "It sounds just like her. If I ever get her in the right place-" She didn't complete the thought.

"What happens now?" Her friend Elaine broke the momentary silence.

Jo shrugged. "Tom will hear of it from someone. There's always a busybody who will stop in at the bar to give him the word." Tom Tucker was head bartender at the liveliest night spot in town. "Then he'll wear my ass out and throw me out in the street." She tried to laugh, but it caught in her throat.

"We told her that Tom was a brute!" Elaine exclaimed indignantly. She wet her lips delicately with the tip of her tongue. "Will he- will he really-ahh-he won't actually-ahh- whip you?"

"The hell he won't," Joe said briefly.

"But that's dreadful!" Elaine Rogers leaned closer to her friend. "How-what will he do?"

"Stripe my bare behind with his belt." Jo Tucker contemplated the thought in silence for ten seconds. "And then divorce me."

"Stripe your-" Elaine Rogers paused as a little shiver ran through her. "That's just dreadful!" she repeated. She swallowed as an excess of saliva filled her mouth. "You should leave right now," she said, but with no real conviction in her voice.

"Where would I go?" Jo asked logically. "And it wouldn't do any good. I'd have to face the music eventually, anyway. It's just one of those things. I've come to one of life's forks in the road. I suppose I knew it subconsciously when I first..." Her voice died away.

"But it's ridiculous for you to stay here when you know that Tom will-will mistreat you!" Elaine protested.

"I'm hoping I can make a deal with him," Jo replied. "After he works out his mad on my tail, I'll ask him if I can stay while I find a job and a room. He might do it." She thought about it a moment. "And then again he might not."

"I still say it's ridiculous to stay here when you know for a fact that Tom will abuse you physically," Elaine said warmly.

Jo hadn't heard her. Lost in her own thoughts, her tone when she spoke again was almost musing. "You know, Elaine, if I can get my nerve up I might even tell him myself."

"Tell him yourself! When you've already said-"

"I know, I know," Jo interrupted her. "But he'd take it a little better coming from me, I think. Not much, but a little. Then he might let me stay till I get a job."

"I should think you could look for help to- to the man-the man who-" Elaine Rogers found herself unable to complete the sentence.

"The man who's been fucking me?" Jo asked with an attempt at insouciance that didn't quite come off.

"How you talk, Jo!" Elaine protested, but there were two spots of high color in her pale cheeks.

Jo ignored her friend's remark. "Wade isn't going to be any happier about this being out in the open than Tom," she predicted darkly. "I know damn well I can't look for any help there."

"Wade certainly is a lot like Tom in some respects," Elaine agreed. "You seem to-seem to-"

"Let my inclinations run to the brute type?" Jo asked lightly. "I suppose I have to admit it. It's the single flaw in my otherwise sterling character." She grinned impudently at her friend.

"I don't see how you can be so casual about it, Jo."

Jo's renewed shrug was fatalistic. "What good will it do to be anything else?" She studied Elaine speculatively. "Haven't you ever strayed off the reservation, honey? Or are you off it and just a little bit more discreet than I was?"

"Of course not!" Elaine flared, but her color remained high. "I wouldn't-wouldn't think of it! I wouldn't dare!"

"It's the daring that makes it so tingly," Jo said. "When you know you're out on a limb and you can almost hear the sound of the saw and a man's big thing had you nailed to the bed, plunging in and out-"

"Joe!"

Jo Tucker laughed as her friend bit her lip nervously. "How about a drink, Elaine? Maybe with a little Dutch courage I can face Tom and get it off my chest."

"Oh, I couldn't! If Harry ever smelled it on my breath-"

Jo looked at her curiously. "It would be your lily-white ass in the grease? Harry doesn't look the type somehow."

"He's not. He wouldn't speak to me for a week, though."

"An attitude that saves wear and tear on the fundament," Jo said, trying to sound philosophical.

"An attitude that infuriates me!" Elaine said spiritedly.

"Better stick with what you have, kiddo," Jo replied. "Take it from the voice of experience. Well, I'm going to pour myself three fingers and see if a nervous stomach can hold it down. Sure you won't join me?"

"I have to rush home." Elaine evaded a second outright refusal. She picked up her gloves and handbag. "I'll-I may call you later, Jo."

"Not tonight," Jo said firmly. "You can learn the gory details in the morning. If I'm still here in the morning."

She ushered her friend to the apartment door.

Deputy Sheriff Wade Sampson sat at his desk in the sheriff's office. He had long since come to think of it as his own desk, since Sheriff Carlson, elderly, had been ill for some time. Wade was a burly man, thick-shouldered and short-necked. His belly protruded over his belt, but it was a hard belly. He had small eyes and a bullet head, close-cropped, while his expression was usually an intimidating glower. Wade Sampson was highly aware of the prerequisites of his office and not at all bashful about employing them to his own best advantage.

He had been deputy long enough to know where a lot of bodies were buried in the community, as he was fond of saying about the private peccadilloes which came within the department's province, and even influential businessmen smiled weakly at his heavy-handed, razor-edged attempts at witticisms. Wade had a reputation as a hard man, a reputation he delighted in and did nothing to refute.

He glanced at his watch impatiently. The girl was late, and he had made a special trip back to the office in the basement of the county building. Well, he'd make her butt smoke when she did arrive. His heavy lips loosened lasciviously at the thought. The sassiest of the local sassy little pullets lost their ginger when Wade Sampson got a shot at their tailpieces. And Wade Sampson spent the greater part of his waking day scheming for and arranging just such confrontations.

The iron bar on the basement's side door clanged open and a girl sidled inside. She was slim, dark-haired, ivory-skinned, and breathless. Her young face was puckered in worry. "I'm sorry, Mr. Sampson, I h-hurried as fast as-"

"You're late," Wade Sampson declared flatly. "You must not care whether I tell your mother or not."

"Oh, I do! I do! Please don't do that! Please don't-"

"Get yourself over here," Wade said heavily.

The girl approached him with obvious trepidation. "N-not so hard this time, Mr. Sampson?" she pleaded. "Please? I'll-"

"Quiet," Wade growled. "I told you a month ago you had a choice after Doug Carroll caught you shopliftin' in his store an' I brought you here. I told you that you could choose between my callin' your mother right then an' there, or takin' two bare-bottom spankings a month apart, didn't I?"

"Yes, but I didn't know-"

Wade unbuckled his gun belt and dropped it on the desk. "Get over my knees," he said.

The girl started to cry. She could have been anywhere from fifteen to seventeen. She approached Sampson with tears streaming down her cheeks and her hands nervously smoothing her dress over her stomach. "It h-hurts so," she sobbed, but she obediently draped her slender frame over the deputy sheriff's heavy thighs.

Wade Sampson reached over her pliant body to open his desk drawer from which he removed a cut-down ping-pong paddle. Half its surface and a third of its weight had been removed. The remainder was mercilessly effective in contributing a burning smart to a girlish bared behind.

"P-please!" the girl whimpered in a choked voice as she felt Wade reach for the hem of her skirt. "Not h-hard."

Sampson paid no attention. With the skill born of practice he rolled skirt and slip up the girl's back until the entire expanse of her pink-pantied bottom was exposed. The girl wriggled uneasily when she felt Sampson's big hand at the waistband of her panties. "Oh!" she exclaimed breathlessly as he drew her underwear down suddenly so that the whole of her pale-ivory petite buttocks appeared.

"Now we'll just see to it you think it over a time or two before you go into a store again with itchy fingers," Sampson said heavily.

He raised the paddle, and the girl flinched. "I won't! I won't!" the girl bleated. "I-p-prom-ise I won't ever-oww!"

The "oww!" had been immediately preceded by the explosive crack of the paddle on her bare flesh. The young buttocks clenched convulsively as the pink outline of the paddle sprang up on a soft globe. Wade Sampson aimed the paddle at its twin and snapped the smooth wood onto its resilient target-area. "Oooooh!" the girl gasped as her stomach climbed involuntarily from Wade's knees.

He thrust her ruthlessly into position again, then steadily pursued the writhing, pinkening girlish behind which threshed frantically in a vain effort to evade the accumulating heat in the young, nude hind parts. The girl began to kick at each burning impact of the little paddle, her slender legs parting to disclose downy body hair at their juncture. Wade Sampson's heavy features turned nearly as red as the hot-looking youthful hemispheres he was spanking.

"Oww! Ooooh! Oooooooh! OWWWW! Ohh-hhhh! Mr. S-Sampson! Ohhhhh!" the girl cried out. Choked sobs punctuated the increasing volume of her pitiful shrieks. "Owwww! It h-hurts! It - oooooh! - hurts! Ohh! Owww! Owwwww! OWWWWWW! Aieeeeeee!"

Sampson held the light weight on his knees despite the girl's squirming as her bare seat turned crimson. She humped herself up and down, twisted from side to side, disclosing anew mossy curls covering but not concealing a dainty-looking slit, then yelled hoarsely as she found herself totally unable to escape the paddle blistering her naked rump. She bucked and heaved, modesty forgotten in the midst of her gluteal distress.

"There!" Wade Sampson announced suddenly, stopping the spanking when a note of hysteria entered the girlish high-pitched shrieks. For an instant the girl didn't realize her ordeal had ended; then she rolled off the deputy's knees and crouched on the floor, moaning softly as she furiously rubbed her scarlet croup with both hands. Wade stared at the dark bush under the smooth bowl of her rounded belly, itself pink from its frictionizing struggle against Wade's khakis.

"Don't let me have any more phone calls from storekeepers like Doug Carroll, understand?" he said in a warning voice as the girl's half-strangled sobs and whimpers gradually died out.

"Oooooh, you w-won't, b-believe me!" the girl promised fervently. She removed her hands from her bottom to scrub her knuckles against her tear-reddened eyes, but almost immediately returned them to rub soothingly again. "Ohhhhhh, but my behind is B-BURN-ING!"

"Get yourself together," Wade said patronizingly, eyes on the vermilion flower of the budding seat cushions above the slender white stalks of the girl's thighs. "You're showin' quite a bit there, you know."

A hot tide of color flooded the young face as the girl groped for and then tugged up the panties bunched at mid-thigh. Hurriedly she scrambled to her feet and shook down the slip and dress rolled up around her shoulders. "Can-can I go now, Mr. Sampson?" she asked timidly.

"Sure you can," he said easily. "An' keep that ass of yours out've trouble, okay? I'd hate to have to give you another whalin' like that."

Wordlessly the girl moved to the door leading to the outside stairs and the street.

When it clanged shut behind her, Wade Sampson laughed heartily, held the paddle under his nose for an instant and sniffed at it curiously, then thrust it back into the desk drawer out of sight.

Tommy Johnson parked his eight-year-old car in front of Cathy Riggjns' house and turned to Cathy on the front seat beside him. His gray eyes appraised her innocent-looking face framed in blonde hair that descended her back. "You've changed, Cathy," he said softly.

"Changed? How?" she asked.

"Since we were in school together, I mean."

"You shouldn't have dropped out of school, Tommy," the girl said earnestly. "That's why you're having so much trouble finding a job. A good job."

"Oh, I make a few bucks. The factory pays me for playing with its football and baseball teams. And something comes up once in a while." He leaned toward the girl. "But I can't get over the change in you."

"You're exaggerating," she said, but she was smiling. "No, I'm not exaggerating," he replied emphatically. "In school you were so skinny it was hard to see you. Now-" He casually dropped a hand on Cathy's thigh and squeezed it lightly. His eyes were on the outline of her breasts under her blouse. "Now you've got the meat where the meat should be, Cathy."

She moved her thigh away from his hand, far more masculine than boyish despite his cherubic, choir-boy features, trying to keep from showing in her face the quick stir of inner excitement she felt at his touch. "Dr. Haley said I was a late-bloomer," she said. "But I always knew who you were in school, Tommy."

He moved closer to her on the front seat of the car, his brown-haired head so close to her blonde one that his lips grazed her ear. Cathy tried in vain to stifle a shiver that rippled through her. "Are you a virgin, Cathy?" he murmured against the captive ear. His hand dropped once more upon her thigh and this time disappeared under her skirt.

"It's no s-sin to be a virgin," Cathy retorted, groping through her skirt for the wrist of the hand advancing teasingly up her thigh.

"And I'll bet you've got the cutest little pink unused cunt," he whispered.

The forbidden word startled her. "You mustn't, Tommy," she said, as much to his use of language as to the fingers creeping-crawling up her inner leg. She had hold of Tommy's wrist but his greater strength slowed down his ascending hand hardly at all.

He half turned in the seat to get better leverage, and despite Cathy's hand attempting to restrain him his fingers first touched, then tickled, then cuddled her pantied crotch. "Ahh-hhh, that's a fat little pussy," he half-crooned.

"Tommy!" the girl exclaimed in a near-panic at the sudden flood of sensation assailing her. The male fingers danced lightly over her secret flesh, evoking a swelling of her labial lips that she could actually feel. She was afraid that he could feel it, too, through the thin fabric of her flesh-strained panties. "We're right-out on the-street!" she protested breathlessly. "Someone-might see!"

He turned his head and kissed her soft neck. "Ohhh!" Cathy exclaimed as she felt a quick gush of moisture where the probing fingers titillated her warmly glowing sex-pot. "T-Tom-my! No!"

Abruptly he removed his hand but he kissed her neck again as goose bumps rose visibly on the milky-white skin of her arms. "I'll meet you tomorrow," he said briskly. "Same time." He leaned across her and opened the car door on her side, favoring her with a brightly cheerful smile. A hand under her elbow assisted her out of the car door and she felt a friendly pat on her bottom as she stood erect on partly trembling legs. The car roared away as Tommy gave her a casual arm-wave.

Cathy stood on the sidewalk in front of her house, hoping her confused stimulation didn't show in her face. Slowly her rapid pulse and quick-beating heart subsided. In high school Tommy Johnson had been an athletic god she had worshipped from afar, uncomplainingly accepting that he couldn't even see her own skinny, straggly-haired blondeness.

She had been surprised when he appeared suddenly with his car this afternoon and offered her a ride home from her part-time job at the library. And she had been surprised-and yes, she had to admit it, she had been thrilled- by his bold advances. Tommy was a handsome boy-man, rather-and due to her late-blooming upon which Dr. Haley had remarked, Cathy had had very little experience with boys.

She sighed unconsciously before turning to the cement walk that led to her widowed mother's house. Inside, she followed her nose to the enticing odors emerging from the kitchen, again hoping that her excitement wasn't evident. "Do I have time for a bath before dinner, mother?" she asked, kissing Edna Riggins' cheek.

"If you hurry, dear," her mother replied.

In her own room Cathy approached the floor-length mirror attached to the inner side of her bathroom door. Serious-faced, she took her skirt in both hands and raised it until the crotch of her panties was visible. She stared silently at the damp spot evident upon the panties' gusset. She touched herself lightly there with a finger, watching the image of the sweet-faced blonde girl in the mirror with a finger probing between her thighs.

She still felt half-dizzy from the surfeit of emotion she had so suddenly experienced in the front seat of Tommy's car. Upon impulse she faced about, then looked over her shoulder at her pantied rear. She clamped her dress and slip under her armpits, then pulled her panties down until all her alabaster-white bottom showed in the mirror. She examined the slender stalk of her waist below which depended the surprisingly fruity twin globes of her silky-looking buttocks.

She reached behind herself to pat the resilient flesh, then palpate it, then finally swing it lightly from side to side with flirting motions of her hips. The flaring hemispheres, dazzling in their whiteness in the light reflected from the window, danced and swayed and jiggled delightfully.

Cathy turned and faced the mirror again. She pushed her panties farther down until all of the sloping bowl of her pearly white stomach was exposed with the blonde, mossy curls on her lower belly disappearing into her thigh-juncture.

She touched herself again where Tommy had touched her. For three years now she had been relieving with a finger once a week the accumulated burning itch pent up inside her chubby, silky-furred pussy, but it had never felt like it had in Tommy's car. She was ashamed every time she did it to herself. She had felt ashamed with Tommy, too, but only because she was afraid he could sense the nearly out-of-control state she had so quickly reached with him. She didn't quite understand still how it had happened or why she hadn't vigorously repulsed such advances.

She sighed again, stooped swiftly to turn on the water in the tub with her de-pantied behind pointing nudely in the air. She saw herself in the glass and wriggled her hips again, watching the expansion and contraction of the deep crevice separating her snowy hind cheeks.

Only Dr. Haley had ever set masculine eyes upon Cathy Riggins in such a state, upon the examination table.

Only Dr. Haley, until now.